


The First Weeks

by AnUniverseAway



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Get yourself a friend like Riza, Grief/Mourning, Some royai because i have no self control, Spoilers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23559508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnUniverseAway/pseuds/AnUniverseAway
Summary: The first week he tries to do everything he can that others aren’t willing to do to catch the person who’s written a death sentence for themselves the moment they killed Hughes. It comes to a quick stop when the case is officially suspended. He feels nauseous with anger about the military and all it encompasses.It’s not why he begins to despise himself.That starts when he gets home and his fingers itch to draw the transmutation circle he knows he shouldn’t draw.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	The First Weeks

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably warn for spoilers? But like, why would you read fanfiction if you haven't seen the show completely.
> 
> ENJOY!

The day the news is brought to him, is the day Roy feels himself become the person he’s sworn to not ever become.

Somehow, the world doesn’t stop, the wind doesn’t lay still, the sun doesn’t stop shining when he’s told, “I’m sorry to say, Colonel Mustang, but Brigadier General Hughes has been killed.”

For a moment his mind is blank, except for the last word dancing in his mind _. Killed, killed, killed_.

“What? Why?” He blurts out angrily, not making any sense of what he's being told. Then, realising _this question_ makes precisely zero sense to anyone except to himself, he snaps, “tell me exactly what happened.”

Who had the nerve to kill Maes Hughes?

Who had the nerve to kill his best friend?

He was supposed to be welcomed in Central by a loud voice and unwanted photographs shoved in his face. Not by the white noise in his head that started the moment this conversation began.

Unlike what he expects, he doesn’t feel any better knowing what has happened. He blames the fact that there wasn’t that much to tell to begin with.

**

The first week he tries to do everything he can that others aren’t willing to do to catch the person who’s written a death sentence for themselves the moment they killed Hughes. It comes to a quick stop when the case is officially suspended. He feels nauseous with anger about the military and all it encompasses.

It’s not why he begins to despise himself.

That starts when he gets home and his fingers itch to draw the transmutation circle he knows he shouldn’t draw.

Pathetic, he thinks to himself even as he sits down and tries to remember the array he’d made years ago just after the war. Not twenty minutes later he almost has it completely finished. Thinking about how to get the actual ingredients he hears his own voice from a few years ago.

‘ _We alchemists are so predictable.’_

He rips the paper with the designed circle in half, instantly.

He hears it and doesn’t get it out of his mind. He hears it over and over and over again, every time he even thinks about committing the taboo.

Which means he hears it a lot.

He hears it as he walks into HQ and Meas’ office is occupied by someone else.

He hears it as he eats dinner with Gracia and Elicia and stares at the one empty dinner table seat.

He hears it after dinner, when Elicia says ‘I’m sure daddy misses us too’.

He hears it when he sits alone at the bar at an ungodly hour on a weekday with no one to share his drink with. He drinks in the hope he doesn’t hear it. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t stop him from trying either.

He goes to sleep with an ache in his heart, thinking ‘today has been another day of grieving, another day to acceptance’.

He wakes up the next morning with the exact same ache, seeming more severe than the day before.

This routine of hearing this mantra settles in his life and he doesn’t really know what to do about it. Until he finds an alternative one, or rather, someone else does for him.

**

It’s the second week. Dinner at the Hughes’ has always been a fortnight occurrence. His sleeves are shoved up his biceps, half his arm in steaming hot water as he washes the dishes next to Gracia. To his surprise, she is the one offering the advice ‘they say work is the best antidote’.

He figures he can always try, and because Roy doesn´t half ass things, he drowns himself in it. Tries to exhaust himself by overworking so that he will be too tired to even think about going out and to a bar. He soon realises that exhaustion isn’t doing anything for him either. If anything, it slows him down. So much that Hawkeye feels the need to comment on it. Unlike her, though, she does this indirect.

At lunchtime, one day, while dropping off files, she proposes an idea.

“Do you want to walk with me, sir?”

Roy looks up from his desk.

“What for?”

“Just a break stroll,” she says, indifferent. “I found it’s nice walking out. Keeps my mind occupied.”

Seeing what she’s doing, he casts his eyes back down and says, “No, thank you. You’re excused,” vaguely waving to the door without looking up.

He can hear her contain a sigh, so she might as well have. She only says, “That’s okay, maybe in your own time, sir,” and walks out the door.

**

It’s the third week, and Roy walks. _A lot_. He walks so much he wonders if he’s been in Central at all, discovering all of its shops and sneaky alleys. It´s quite fun, actually.

He tells himself he came up with the idea. He´s the one who thought this was a better habit than the ones before. But the more he tells himself, the more he gets annoyed by giving into Hawkeye’s premise and his pace increases. There’s a whiny need of something burning down his throat and soon he’s no longer wandering around aimlessly.

He walks until he’s somewhere he can end up with a glass of ember liquor in his gloved hand.

He stares at the door, clenches and unclenches his jaw, tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek.

He can almost see the looks of other’s pitying him and judging him for coping this way. But he’s absolutely sick of others telling him how to cope. At least this way he can experience life as bearably for a few hours.

Which is why he opens the door and when the bartender sees him, he gives a polite nod and goes to make his usual.

This is what he does for the following weeks; at six p.m. promptly, he leaves the office, dropping the unfinished work on his subordinates desks. He makes way to a bar far enough from Central Command and his apartment, but close enough to walk it. He rarely eats proper dinner, sometimes it’s a sandwich he buys on the way, otherwise he settles for the cocktail nuts on the bar.

He never knows at what time he leaves or at what time he’s home. But every morning when his alarm goes off it feels like he’s had twenty minutes of sleep.

He knows it’s a routine he can’t keep. He just doesn’t know how to stop.

**

It does stop though, in the middle of the fifth week. He walks into a newly discovered bar when he sees blonde hair and a sharp face. He releases the handle of the door instantly like a child getting caught stealing from the cookie jar.

“Hello, sir,” Lieutenant Hawkeye says politely.

Roy narrows his eyes.

“Don’t do that,” he says, getting to the point. “Don’t judge my coping mechanism.”

“Drinking so you’re able to deny General Hughes’ death is not coping, sir.”

He hasn’t heard anyone say his name in weeks and it’s a punch in the gut. It squeezes the air out of his lungs in a sudden sharp exhale.

“Denying?” he hisses. His body tremors, his vision whites out with anger, his voice wavers as he says, “How can I deny it if it’s staring me in the face every second of the day?”

Straightening his back and taking a deep breath he tries to compose himself. He swallows.

“I’m a grownup, Lieutenant Hawkeye, I can decide for myself,” he says. He barely has any grip on his life. He evidently doesn’t have any grip on the life’s around him either, otherwise there wouldn’t be this empty feeling inside of him which he doesn’t know how to fill.

So, let him at least have control about the things he can do with himself, body damaging or not.

“I’m not judging you,” Hawkeye adds, kindly.

For some reason, this irritates him even more. “Then what are you doing here?” he asks, and he feels childish, getting angry this way. “Is this not you trying to bust me at doing something you consider bad?”

“Walk with me?” she asks.

He clenches his jaw, suddenly avoiding her eyes. The stubbornness inside him is still stomping its feet on the floor and whining to turn around and go the bar.

When he meets her eyes again, she doesn´t look expectantly. As if it truly was just a simple offer. It´s what makes him slacken his hands where they were fists at his sides and has him walking away from the bar after a short nod.

They don´t say a word. Somehow, Roy is surprised by this; he fully expected her to take the opportunity to lecture him about his lifestyle. He asked her to take measures if he’d become irresponsible in any sort of way (not that he’s becoming nefarious or something, so he wouldn’t expect her to, you know, actually _kill_ him). He does expect her to keep him on the right track, though. She promised.

When they arrive at her apartment and she nods her goodbye, it’s sheer relieve that washes over him.

After that, they always seem to find each other walking at night and continue to walk together. Through the busy streets, through the city parks, through the outskirts of central.

Hawkeye always seems to be able to bully him into buying and eating food.

“How do you expect people to see you as the future leader of this country if you’re getting scrawny?”

“You,” he begins, exchanging his money for a simple ham sandwich to the cashier, “take too much liberty in taunting me. _And_ in deciding what I spend _my_ money on.” He halts to say ‘thanks’ to the cashier and offers a small smile.

“Last time I checked, I was fairly certain it’s the money _I_ earned, from the work _I_ did.”

“Not when you dump half of the work you’re supposed to do onto the plates of your subordinates.”

Roy’s face heats up then, ashamed. Ready to backfire the comment or make up any excuses, he opens his mouth, but finds that he can’t. He can’t and he doesn’t have any right to. Instead, he clears his throat and remains silent.

Sometimes they pass Hawkeye’s apartment when they walk together. Well Roy passes it, and Hawkeye goes inside. Tonight, however, that seems to be changing.

“Would you like to come in for a while?” she asks, almost business-like and Roy supresses a smile.

Instead he slowly raises an eyebrow. She rolls her eyes. And that’s that. He goes inside with her.

They have danced around the topic of Maes’ death since his funeral. He hates how he’s not being acknowledged like that. He hates it almost as much as talking about it.

Tonight though, he feels like he really wants to.

And so, when Hawkeye’s made tea and gives it to him, he begins to talk. He tells her all about Maes as if she’s never met him.

He tells her about the time Maes came in one morning, when they were both cadets, tripped over his own feet and faceplanted right on the floor. He tells her he laughed so hard, unable to stop, that they both got an official warning. He tells her about how, after a particular exhausting bootcamp Maes dragged them both to a photographer, who was making pictures at the quarters that day, and demanded he’d take a photograph of them both, completely covered in dirt and bruises. He tells her that photograph the most precious thing he has.

He tells her about how Maes was going to push him to the top.

“I almost did it,” and this is the first time he averts his eyes since he’s started talking. “I had redesigned the whole human transmutation circle. I, the man who wants to, who _will_ , one day rule the country, was planning on breaking one of the state’s laws.”

Although quiet, she says, “You’re saying that as if the state isn’t already ruled by hypocrites. It’s just the person on the top who decides in what context law-breaking is allowed. Every person who doesn’t outrank him simply doesn’t have a chance to explain their context.”

After a few beats of silence, she adds “You’re not a bad person for wanting him back, sir, it’s not where you went wrong. You decided against it when you threw the paper away.”

Roy looks up at her then, sceptical “How would you know I threw it away?”

“You’re a good man,” she says it so matter-of-factly, as if telling him that she knows the sun will rise the next morning.

Hughes voice echo’s through his head, all the times he said something along the lines of Roy making a good leader. And his heart sinks into his stomach, once again.

“Who has the audacity to die before their best friend,” Roy says, “It’s just downright rude.”

Hawkeye nods not saying anything and Roy wonders, why is she here, having him over in favour of having a good night.

Then she says, “I understand how you feel.”

It switches his mood drastically.

“Don’t act like your loss is as big as mine. You couldn’t understand.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hawkeye says, a frown on her face. Roy immediately averts his eyes from her, fixing it on a scratch on the table and regrets running his mouth like that. He’s still pushing away from her in every conversation. And what for?

“The first few days that Brig- that Hughes wasn’t at HQ were drastically different. Mornings didn’t contain him barging in through the door out of procrastination, filling the office with his loud voice and stories about Elicia nobody asked for. Mornings contained sheer silence. It was awful, it _is_ awful. But those first few days… I don’t think I’ve mourned a loss like that since my father passed away.”

She looks at him, he sees it out of the corner of his eyes. He keeps his own locked on the same scratch on the table, chin up.

“But then you arrived, every morning. Five minutes too late.”

A non-essential detail, he finds, but doesn’t say anything.

“And the moment you set foot in the office; my mourning was completely overwhelmed by yours. Your grief filled every corner of the room. Floor to ceiling. Every shelf, every drawer, every tear in the wall was filled with sorrow.”

For a moment it’s only the clock indicating the passing of seconds, but time has become a stranger to Roy these days. He doesn’t know how much has passed when she continues.

“I almost couldn’t stand it; it was driving me crazy. It was a horrible feeling. I didn’t mourn like that. Ever. So, I can’t possibly say I relate to you. I can only offer my understanding.”

It feels like hours have passed before he finds his voice, and merely says, “Right.”

When he finishes the tea, he leaves.

On the way back, her words are occupying his thoughts. The first few days were a haze to him. He honestly barely remembers them. He does remember though, how it felt walking into the office every morning.

Because it mostly consisted of averting gazes or pitying glances.

It made it all the more unbearable. it seemed to increase his loneliness.

But because of what Hawkeye told him, he understands. Understands that you can only want to look away from such a feeling of sorrow or at least try not to provoke it in a work environment. Roy didn´t realise he was the manifestation of grief in that moment. They weren´t avoiding him, they were grieving along with him.

Riza, as always, has given him a new perspective and another step away from feeling alone.

**

It’s the seventh week when he slips and gets drunk. And getting drunk leads him to Riza’s apartment.

It’s not even past eleven when he rings the bell of her apartment. He leans against the doorpost, forcing his eyes to stay open and realizes he looks like a complete mess.

Just when the door opens, he stands up straight and puts on his most charming smile.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye-“

“You’re drunk.”

So much for hiding that. “I’m n- Yes, I’m drunk. I’m sorry and I don’t know why, I’m an idiot and am rambling, please stop me?”

Her eyes read him, searching for an answer. Or a question when she asks, “Why come here?”

He can only give a sheepish laugh that radiates ‘I think we both know why’.

She breathes in and out, steps aside to let him in.

“Thank you,” he says, as he takes a step forward.

“You’re a disgrace,” she replies as she walks out of the hallway, but there’s an underlying tone of teasing.

“Bold of you to call your superior that.”

She halts before walking turning around the corner and looks at him, “Hm, as if you’d remember it in the morning.”

“I will do my best.”

Hanging up his coat, he hears music. When he steps into her kitchen where Riza is making tea, he hears it more clearly. He’s never heard her listen to music before.

“I don’t like many artists, but I like this one,” she says when she reads his puzzled face.

She continues to talk about the artist a gleam in her eyes, when she hands him his tea and sits down next to him. She talks so he can remain silent, not trusting his brain-to-mouth-filter at the moment either. He feels a little guilty, not paying any attention to what she’s saying, but his mind is still a little foggy. He thinks about how she does this for him, adapting to him perfectly without him saying a word. He thinks about how he wishes Riza wouldn’t tie her hair up all the time, but wear it like she does now, framing her face. He thinks about when Hawkeye became Riza in his head. His eyes travel her face then and suddenly, mid-sentence she smiles, and he doesn’t think at all and-

He kisses her. Her sentence is cut off abruptly. It’s smooth, of course it is, but also swift, because she pulls away. His stomach drops when she shakes her head.

“Not now,” she says, offering a small smile. It’s not a not ever, so he nods, understandingly.

It’s quiet for a while and after playing what he did over and over again in his mind he asks, “Why do you put up with me?”

He really doesn’t understand. He’s not good company at all. He's unkind to her. He feels like he practically _harassed_ her just know and yet.

Yet she’s surprised at the question.

“You would do the same for me,” she says simply, but Roy thinks ‘no, that’s not it’. She just says that, thinking he’ll take the answer because a big part of him revolves around equivalent exchange. But it’s not why.

It’s in the blush on her cheeks and the determined look in her eyes that says, ‘I couldn’t stop it if I tried’ and he’s right there with her.

He ignores the way his stomach flutters the way he has for a few years now. It’s instantly replaced by the feeling of guilt. His best friend died; he should feel nothing but grief. He owes Maes that much.

He buries his face in his hands, his voice muffled and embarrassingly whiny as he says, “I don’t think I can bear it. I just want it to stop.” _Childish, childish, childish_ , he scolds himself.

“I doubt the pain will get any less severe,” Riza says, and shouldn’t she be comforting him?

“But,” she continues, “The moments will become less frequent after the first weeks or months or years, however much time you need and in time you’ll have to learn to let yourself enjoy the good moments in life. Things that you treasure and are here.”

Out of the corner of his eyes he can see her touching her mouth with her fingertips, “And I think you’re making progress with that,” she whispers.

He doesn’t see how the world can keep functioning when the earthshattering truth of Maes Hughes absence is part of this world now. He doesn’t understand how the trees have the audacity to keep growing, birds to keep singing, for the wind to keep blowing. He doesn’t understand how the world can keep spinning on its axis. But it does.

The sun will set, and it will rise. And time, even though he doesn’t acknowledge it, will move forward.

He feels like it’s time to move with the rest of the world. _That_ is what he owes Maes.

**

The next morning, he opens the door to his office and sees everyone has already taken their seat and is working like every other morning, but it’s different. They all offer him a ‘good morning’, varying from half-asleep to upbeat, like every other morning, but it’s different.

It’s different, because it’s taken him a long time to realise that he’s lost Maes, but he didn’t lose the people who believe in him. He just wasn’t able to see it.

He sees it now, when all their faces are turned to him, questioning, as he keeps on staring. Shaking himself out of thoughts, he gives a nod and says ‘good morning’ back, _unlike_ every other morning. He takes a seat behind his desk.

He doesn’t need to look up to see their widened eyes and disbelieving smiles.

**

It’s the eighth week and he decides to stay a little longer this time, making up for all the work he unnecessarily dumped on his teams desks the past few weeks. When only Riza remains and lays a few papers on his desk, he looks up at her and grins.

He gestures to himself and the desk, “Am I getting into your good books yet? I don’t think I’ve been this productive since I joined the military.”

She tries and fails to supress a smile and hides it by turning to leave, but he calls after her.

“Lieutenant.”

Her eyes are curious when they meet his and he truly wants to be able to ignore how his heartrate speeds up.

“Yes, sir?”

“I never thanked you,” he says.

She tilts her head, glancing at the paper she just gave him, “They’re just the meeting minutes, nothing I haven’t done before.”

“No, what I meant is that I never thanked you for putting up with me.”

She sighs, “Don’t call it ‘putting up with you’. It’s not how-“

“Please,” he says holding up his hand and her mouth clicks shut. “Let me finish.”

She nods slowly.

“I haven’t thanked you, so I’m doing it now,” and his gaze never wavers from hers as he says, “Thank you. For letting me walk with you, for letting me into your home. Thank you for getting me on the right path again.” He gives a short laugh, “I don’t think you realise how much I need you.”

“Sir,” she says, and he hates (loves) how it almost sounds affectionate. “You don’t actually need me to do that. You don’t need me like that in the same way I don’t need you.”

It’s really not what he’d expected her to say. He tries his best to get a ‘kicked puppy’ look on his face and says, “Now you’re just being unkind to me.”

“I really do hope you realise, sir, that I didn’t ‘make you better’,” she says intently, making quotations in the air. “What kind of world would that be? If you needed other people to tell you to make the right decisions. No, we have to make those individually.”

Roy can only think ‘no, no, no, can’t you see?’

“I would have to disagree,” Roy says. “You were a stability in all my unstableness. How could I stand up and go into the right direction if there was no solid ground under me?”

“I could provide stability under your feet, yes. But, at the end of the day, you’re the one who has to get back on your own feet again. And you did.”

He smiles at her and thinks that this woman will never cease to amaze him.

“But you’re right,” she continues, “You do need someone to get your head out of your ass. It seems you like it too much up there.”

He coughs masking a laugh, a little shocked by her. Then grimaces.

“You paint a pretty vivid image.”

She shrugs indifferently, but the smile on her face suggests otherwise.

“You’re welcome, sir. Now you know what you look like.”

“Alright, alright, I think it’s time for you to be excused.”

She chuckles and turns to leave, but she’s the one that stops herself this time. “Thank you, too.”

His eyebrows knit together as he asks, “What for?"

As if granted permission, her eyes fall to his mouth and his own widen, breath caught in his throat. When their gazes meet again, she smiles, humoured by the red on the tips of his ears.

The door closes behind her when she leaves, and he can breathe again. He smacks his hands on his flustered face and hisses at himself “you’re thirty for heaven’s sake, compose yourself.”

**

It’s been nine weeks since Maes Hughes has been shot when Roy finds that there’s no right way to cope with loss. There’s not a manual for how to grief.

“I’m on my way to the top. Are you coming with me?”

The only thing to do is to find people you trust enough to get you through the worst of it. The people you don’t need to ask the question he just asked. He did anyway, because it’s all too reassuring when she turns to him and says,

“You know the answer to that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can savely say that I never have put my heart into writing like this and that this work is precious to me. I would love to know what you think and feedback is also highly appreciated :)
> 
> Also, I couldn't resist throwing some royai in there, but you know, so couldn't Miss Arakawa apparently, so why would i bother resisting?


End file.
